What Do We Do Now?

When things get wonky in the country, teachers invariably find themselves driven back to the question, "What are we supposed to do in times like these?" How do we teach students when the atmosphere is filled with so many problematic ideas and impulses (including, it has to be noted, in their homes).

We struggle with the question as citizens. How do we navigate contentious and toxic times? But teaching adds a whole other layer. If the work is to help students figure out to grow into their best selves and understand how to be fully human in the world--well, how does a context like the present affect the work?

When there is violence and hatred, when the discourse is soaked in bullshit and falsehood and stuff that is being spun so hard that it generates more heat than light, how does a teacher run a classroom? Stick to just the facts (whatever they are this week)? Seek to liberate students-- and does that mean teach them about tough political ideas or teach them how to read and write on their own? Media literacy? 21st century skills? Critical thinking?

I think there's a guiding principle beyond and underneath the questions of content and methods, and as I watch one event after another (Los Angeles, Padilla, No Kings Day, Minnesota Murders) get blown up into something even worse than the badness they already embody. I watch the Dems flail about trying to come up with a strategy for "winning" while the GOP gaslights endlessly, insisting that we aren't seeing what we are plainly seeing. We are soaked in media that is designed to alarm rather than inform. The outrage machine (which is wired up to the money machine) is goosed repeatedly.

What are we missing? Certainly honesty and certainly love and concern for fellow human beings. Certainly we've seen too much of the idea that some people really are worth more than others. And the hyperbolic bullshit is massive, epic, and numbing. But underneath it all, we're suffering from a destruction of trust. Much of it has been deliberate--one of the tools of authoritarianism is to break people's trust in experts, journalism, scientists--anything and everything except whatever Dear Leader says.

Distrust kills relationships. It short-circuits communication because if you can't trust what a person is saying, then you haven't much to go on except your own ideas about what the person is up to, Distrust leads to overreactions, which aid the cycle. You say it's raining? Since I distrust you, I'll go ahead and say it's not raining at all. Then when I go outside and get wet, I look like a fool and the folks on your team have all the more reason to trust you and not me.

So all the navel gazing and study and vivisecting of society is great and all, but what do we do. What do we actually do?

Trust more? I suppose we could try, but putting your trust in someone who is deliberately untrustworthy is foolish. My classroom rule was always to trust students until they gave me a solid reason I couldn't. Or maybe two or three. But deciding to put our trust in people who have proven untrustworthy dozens of times-- that's just asking for trouble.

So maybe earn trust. But you can't control whether or not someone chooses to trust you, and in fact as a public school teacher, there are a lot of folks delivering the message that you can't be trusted.

So maybe the north star has to be this-- act in a way that is deserving of trust. Honesty, integrity, respect, and a dedication to getting the material right-- those all come under the heading of principles that deserve trust in a teacher (or any other human being). They build trust in the organization, and as Edward Deming pointed out at great length, an organization powered by trust is a healthy one and an organization without trust is in trouble.

It is easy to slide into the idea that ends can justify means, and therefor if those means involve sacrificing principles and thereby making yourself less trustworthy, that's okay. But we very rarely accomplish our ends, so we end up being defined by our means.

The thing about being trustworthy is that it allows for a broad range of beliefs and practices. But if you find that pursue particular beliefs or practices you have to using lying and manipulation, if you have to drop integrity and respect, then maybe consider that these are ends not worth pursuing.

But more than ever, students need teachers they can trust (whether they choose to or not), and of course many (if not most) students already have a trustworthy teacher in the classroom. But as teachers are buffeted about by various claims and demands and suggestions about how to respond to the country's current messiness, and if holding onto the idea of trust as an anchor helps--well, it may not seem like much, but in the long run, it is everything.